The Transparent RRSP: The Investor’s Mindset

No Action Taken for the Week of March 6

Let’s have a gander at the charts for the stocks in the Transparent RRSP.

Four weekly charts on freestockcharts.com

The charts for LFE and GRL still look good. LFE is particularly nice in that it held up strong yesterday, despite a big down day for the market.

ZPR could use a correction. I’d like it to either go sideways or have a tiny selloff (hopefully, no lower than the $11.00 area) before going up again.

LIQ got ‘wasted’ on their earnings report yesterday morning, but the fast drop was followed up by some serious buying. Seeing volatility like that can be a little thrilling (for me, at least). A shakeout like this is called capitulation. This is when sellers get out in large numbers due to panic. The stock dropped off the open and went up for the rest of the day.

Whenever a stock trades like this at an abnormal price range and trade volume, it attracts the attention of many: the media, scared investors, and traders who are watching for a potential buying opportunity. I’ve lived through enough earnings/news shakeouts – my biggest regret for most them was abandoning my positions. This is because usually after enough time passes, there was almost always a recovery. I’m going to hold on.

As I mentioned in last week’sRRSP post, the market is in need of a correction before investors can feel confident in taking new positions or adding to their current ones. Remember, I only just entered these positions in the last two months; when you buy a stock at a time when the market is nearing the end of its shorter-term trend, you can face a bit of turbulence while the market either levels out or has a bit of a selloff. I’ve said it before: selloffs are temporary and often short-lived. When the market resumes its uptrend, all you can do is hope that your stock either follows the market or will have started going up before the market gets going again.

The Investor’s Mindset

Investors feel confident when they’re right. If you buy a stock and it’s positive, then you feel like a top contender for Wall Street’s Got Talent. You look for more stocks to buy or you buy more shares of the same one. A rising stock within a rising market is positive feedback and confirms that you made the right call.

If you buy a stock and it’s negative and lower than the position you took, you start frantically looking for reasons that explain where you went wrong. There will always be reasons to support why you’re making money as well as why you’re losing money. The problem with human psychology is that we tend to focus on losses and failures more than our successes and long-term progress.

Losing something is often a traumatic experience for us. We withdraw and try to rationalize why it happened and what could’ve been done to prevent it in the first place. Just watch an athlete on a streak make one mistake. The athlete who recovers quickly and keeps at it like nothing happened conquered that hit on the ego by staying focussed on the goal of the game, not the hitch. (If you’re interested in this high-performance mindset stuff, read TheInner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallwey.)

This doesn’t mean I stick my head in the sand and ignore all the signs saying to cut my losses when I should. I just need more information that’s relevant to me and my plan. I didn’t become a good trader/investor until I truly accepted the ups and downs that come with trading. It has taken me years to get comfortable with that. I’ve read countless books on trading and psychology to see if I was missing something in my mental processes. What I realized was that I was denying myself the joys and rewards that come from being patient.

I discovered the importance of having plans for your trades. Writing it down helps to remind you of your original intentions. (I’m getting better at this. No more loose post-it notes!) If you start getting antsy, then review your plans to see if you’re still on track with your short and long-term expectations.

Disclaimer

Investing involves varying degrees of risk. All content on this website is for information sharing purposes only. This information is not intended to replace the advice and services of licensed professionals. When making decisions on your finances, seek the assistance of competent professionals. The author of this site assumes no risk or responsibility for the investment decisions made by users and readers.